It may not have been clear at the time, but way back in 1977 George Lucas released the first of what would be the holy grail for movie studios: the multimedia franchise. Star Wars hit big and was on everything, and its sequels made for even greater marketing potential. Despite having a legendary toy line, far too many trading card sets and a truly classic vector-graphics arcade game, the first Star Wars pinball was a relatively obscure Empire Strikes Back table. Ignoring the terrible European Star Wars pinball from 1987 there wasn’t anything worth playing after that until Data East’s 1992 Star Wars finally gave the movie the treatment it deserved. Since then there have been a decent amount of notable tables, but even taking those into account there have still been more digital pins from Zen Studios than real-world physical models.
A good-sized chunk of Zen’s Star Wars tables are about to make the journey from flat-screen to VR, including six of the current crop of nineteen plus two brand-new ones. I’ve gotten to play a couple of those over the last two weeks, putting the VR-refurbished Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and all-new The Mandalorian through their paces, plus wander about setting up the Star Wars lair they’re housed in. More than just a collection of tables, Star Wars Pinball VR gives out rewards for hitting certain milestones in each game, which you can then use to decorate the Fan Cave to your heart’s content. Assuming you can earn them, of course, because there’s a lot to chase after and the only way to earn everything is to do everything. For the most part, though, your attention will be on the single pinball table in the room, which is where the heart of the game lies.
Inside that table is a menu that lets you choose any of the eight pinball games. It’s nothing fancy but gets the job done, and once you’ve chosen which one you want, there’s also a selection for classic mode or arcade. The difference is that classic mode is standard three-ball play, while arcade lets you earn upgrades through play to score higher, such as extending the ball-save time or granting better skill-shot bonuses. There are separate leaderboards but the accumulated score for each mode gets tallied up together to unlock new goodies for the Fan Cave.
The two tables in the preview build both played nicely, with Rogue Squadron feeling the more polished of the two mostly because it’s a VR conversion of a completed table. The original version of Rogue Squadron didn’t have the cabinet, so that’s a new addition, but everything else is functionally identical except, of course, the advantage of playing in VR. One of the drawbacks of digital pinball has always been fitting a vertical game on a horizontal screen, with endless tweaks to the camera necessary to get the best view for each table. In VR that’s almost completely unnecessary, and tracking the ball is a near-unconscious moving of the eyes and head. It’s much easier to focus on a flipper when you can just stare right at it, rather than have it on the bottom-center of a screen, and it makes a huge difference in playability. I tested Rogue Squadron in Pinball FX3 and was playing nowhere near as well. VR removes one of the biggest hurdles in playing digital pinball, which makes it feel like a much better game even with identical layout and ball physics.
While I did find Rogue Squadron more polished, the bulk of my time was spent working on improving my Mandalorian game. Like all Pinball FX tables it comes alive with characters hanging around the edge of the action, plus table-toys that are simply impossible to replicate in a real-world setup. The skill shot, for example, is on a mini-playfield using magna-bumpers with the goal to knock down a pair of targets and send the ball into the bay of the Falcon Crest for a hefty score bonus. Once in place the Falcon Crest flies into the center of the board and the rear bay opens up again, dropping the ball into play. There’s also a shot that sends the ball into a funnel-type area, with each spin around the blue gas-jet flames along the edge filling the Mandalorian’s flamethrower. Top it off at 100% and the view drops into the bottom-center of the table, right above the center drain, as the Mandalorian tests out his flamethrower to send the ball flying around the board. There are a lot of fun ways to use the classic physics of pinball with the more videogame-like play of digital, and Zen Studios' experience in this pays off nicely with a good number of physically impossible but visually impressive set pieces. That includes the Mandalorian hanging out beside the pinball table or Storm Troopers opening fire when the ball drains in Rogue Squadron.
Star Wars Pinball VR still has more to show off, especially in the other new toy themed table, Star Wars: Classic Collectibles. That’s going to have to wait for the late April release, but the pair of tables I got to play showed off just how well things are coming along. The Star Wars universe has grown and evolved in ways that would have been unimaginable back in the time of the first trilogy and the Pinball FX series is an oddly satisfying way to take a tour of the many branches and spin-offs the stories have taken. Now a good cross-section of those games will be available in VR, making them more playable and enjoyable than before. For a Star Wars fan or even someone who’s a pinball fan without much interest in the franchise, that’s something to anticipate.
